


The Eye of the Storm

by lodessa



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arguing, Conflict Resolution, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Internal Conflict, Jon Snow Still Knows Nothing, Trust, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 07:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11709330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: Jon and Sansa have a private conversation about their recent public disagreements.





	The Eye of the Storm

“We can’t keep doing this,” Sansa declares, once everyone has finally shuffled out and left them alone. “It makes us look divided, and that’s the last thing we need right now.”

Jon wonders if she is as tired as he is, after these things. If so, there is no sign of it. Her face is a mask of creamy white, impossible to know whether to read as placid or steely. The latter he would think, but sometimes he feels like he does not know her at all. Even such a little thing escapes him. Is she stubborn or indifferent?

“When you question my decisions in front of everyone like that it makes me look weak,” Jon scowls, “Are you trying to undermine me with the rest of the lords?”

He had thought… It seems clearly stupid now, but he’d thought when they had been reunited and she’d stood behind him and supported his claim to the North when he had not even wanted it, he’d thought that it would be simple.

Nothing was ever simple. _You know nothing,_ a familiar voice laughs in his mind.

The truth is that he never did know Sansa, not like he had the others. They had no camaraderie to fall back on only loss and desperation. That is their shared legacy. That is their bond.

“We’re on the same side, Jon. I need you to believe that. If I wanted to to usurp you there would be far better ways of going about it.”

He looks at her and he believes it. She might not have the same experiences he has had, but Sansa is no longer the useless vain creature she was before she went south as much as he is no longer the sullen naive boy he was then. She survived monsters like Cersei and Ramsay with wit and will alone. She studied crafty men like Tyrion and Littlefinger up close. If she wanted to turn the North from him he has no doubt she could.

It’s not that he lacks strategy, but compared to her he sees only in straight lines. If Sansa truly decided to turn on him, the damage would be done before he realized it was happening.

“So why do you keep doing it?” he asks, “If you agree we need to provide a unified front.”

Ygritte had told him girls saw more blood, but Jon is beginning to suspect that they see more of everything. He has realized so many ways in which he was wrong, so many things he didn’t know, but it feels like an avalanche that never ends and somehow he’s always in its path no matter which way he turns.

He doesn’t understand Sansa. He can’t read her, can’t predict her. It makes him nervous.  
He misses Ygritte with an almost physical intensity when he thinks of her. She would have laughed at him, but she would have told him directly all the way he was wrong. She never made a point of being a mystery.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to argue with you in front of everyone if you ever talked to me about what you were planning to say to them beforehand,” Sansa shocks him by enunciating clearly, a direct request that unfortunately twists to an accusation, “Unless you really just think my opinion doesn’t matter and I should keep my mouth shut.”

“I never said that,” he snaps but then he realizes that he hasn’t provided her with a third option.

Does he really respect her so little that he doesn’t believe she might have something valuable to add to their plans? No. Sansa is clever and she knows much more about the business of ruling than he does. A wise leader listens to good council.

Would it be such a terrible idea, he wonders, to talk it out with her beforehand. What is he afraid of? That she will use that knowledge to fight him? That she will still disagree? Or is it more than that? Is he afraid of being swayed by her?

“Jon,” she says and it still feels strange, the tingling sensation of the way she says his name (so different now from the tense curt dismissal of their childhoods), “I can be your partner in this, fight for our family on the battlefields that require a subtle hand instead of a strong arm.”

“It’s my job to protect you,” he says, though the words sound pigheaded and foolish, even as they ring in his own ears.

Does it matter if the better idea comes from him or from her, in the privacy of their family counsel? Is he really so hard headed?

“Why?” she asked suddenly, standing up and pacing away from him, “Because it’s your duty? As king? As brother? Because I’m a valuable asset and you don’t have enough cyvasse pieces to waste one?”

He does not follow her. He stays put.

She looks like a queen. Not like Cersei had, all soft curls and shimmering fabrics… extravagant. No. She is regal without the flashiness, in her muted black: a sharp contrast with her ivory skin and then that flash of color that is her auburn hair. It catches in the firelight. It’s not that she’s beautiful, though of course she is. It’s something else, something she has within herself that draws attention to her without her making a single movement.

“Isn’t it enough that I want to?” he asks, sheepishly running his hand through his hair.

He wants her to trust him, he realizes. He does not want to appear weak before her. To be a subject for manipulation. He wants her to believe in him, to rely on him.

_How can you expect that when you won’t put your faith in her?_

“I won’t go back to being a piece in other people’s game,” she says with conviction.

“I don’t blame you for not thinking it should be me,” he sighs, tired from making impossible choices, tired from trying to be worthy, “I’m not asking you to lie to me and in private pretend that we don’t both wish it were Robb making these decisions instead of me.”

“You really aren’t listening,” the mask slips, just for a moment, revealing her frustration, “Robb is dead. Father is dead. Everyone is dead. We are the only two who are alive. We have to be smarter than they were.”

“You think I don’t know it!” he rises to the bait, “I am doing the best I can, Sansa. I know I’m not as clever as you but by the gods am I trying!”

“I never said you weren’t,” she looks at him with something that might be pity and that is worse than anything else could be, “Win or lose, I can’t just sit back and wait for someone else to decide things anymore Jon."

It’s like something finally clicks into place. He’s been so busy feeling attacked and untrusted. He never stopped for a moment to consider how Sansa’s experiences might be influencing her actions as his are his.

“I’m not trying to use you. I’m not Cersei, or Joffery, or the Tyrells. I’m not Littlefinger or Ramsay. I want you to be happy not useful.”

“Funny,” she says but there’s nothing amused about the way she says it, “That’s exactly what Littlefinger told me, that he wants me to be **happy**.

“What do you want, Sansa?” he asks, trying not to chafe at being compared to to Baelish, in any way, “I’m not asking to win your approval or affection or to manipulate you, gods know it would be a fool’s errands. Just if we’re going to be on the same side I need to know, what do you truly want?”

“Want is a luxury I haven’t had the privilege of in a long time,” she looks slightly taken aback as she slowly answers, “I wanted to go South. I wanted- Well wanting only ever did me harm.”

He finds himself full of rage at the trials that have made her this way, but there’s something else when he thinks of it, when he looks at her: a feeling he can’t place.

“Why are we doing this, then?” he tries again, “What are we trying to accomplish?”

“Survival,” she pauses, “Revenge.”

“And if we have to choose?” he asks.

“The prior, always. Otherwise I wouldn’t be alive now.”

She’d kept her calm, her composure, through all the tortuous indignities, through everything. She’d bit her tongue and balled her fists and she’d endured, she’s survived.

He can’t help imagining it, how hard she must have worked to school her face into that neutral mask he now finds so daunting. Had she cried, in private? She must have. Does she cry yet? Does she scream and rage in the privacy of her chambers? He realizes he doesn’t know.

“Winter is here,” he agrees, “That may be all we can do, survive it.”

“These decisions I am fighting you on… I know you are only doing as father taught you,” she turns back to him, placing her small gloved hands on his, “He would be proud.”

“He was more honorable than I can ever hope to be,” Jon felt embarrassed by her compliment, the how clearly she must see that still he craves that affirmation that can never come from a man who is lost to them all.

“We could all live a thousand years and never see that level of honorableness,” she agrees and his stomach twists, “But look at all the good it did him, Jon. He’s dead. The kingdom is is chaos. And it is not because he wasn’t a good man but because he was too good, too noble, too pure.”

He recoils from her words, his hands putting away from hers. Is she really blaming father for everything that’s happened? If they turn their back on his legacy who are they to each other? To themselves?

“What are you suggesting then? That I stop trying to do the right thing? That I become like **them**?”

The venom in his voice as he says that last word surprises them both he is relatively sure. Just how far does Sansa want him to go? Tyrion betraying his own family? Littlefinger whose allegiance shifts with the changing winds? Cersei who cares for no one but herself? The monsters who tortured and violated her for their own sick amusement?

“No,” she shakes her head, auburn hair coming loose from her cloak, “Keep trying to do the right thing, but let yourself be swayed and tempered by prudence, by reason. You can’t help anyone if you lose. Sometimes you have to do the smart thing in the short term to do the right thing in the long term. Let me be your shadowed hand and deal in the sordid compromises you are above. I can consider the pragmatic realities, the shadow cats in the snowdrifts waiting to pounce. I can clear the way for you, but only if you trust me to.”

“What am I then, but a sham? Taking the credit but secretly letting you make the tough decisions, get your hands dirty while I remain above it all. I should be protecting you not the other way round.”

“Would you say that to Arya, if she were here instead of me? I know you gave her that sword, Jon. I know you told her-”

“And where did that get her? Where is she now, Sansa?” He swallowed the surge of emotion that threatened to overtake him when he thought of his younger sister. His favorite, he admits. He’d always been at ease with her. “It’s been years! We both know they would have found her by now or she would have found us…”

“All the more reason that we can’t afford to sit idly and ignore every possible advantage. I’m not suggesting you give me a sword. I’m telling you to let me use the weapons I already possess. They cost too much to acquire to let them sit and rot.”

She’s pacing again, restless like a caged creature.

He knows that in many ways she is right. He does not have the training, the knowledge, the experience, for politics. She does, even if it is hard won. Not every battle can be won with a sword.

A man has to take responsibility for his decisions. _The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword._ Father’s voice echoes in his mind.

Sometimes he also weeps at the irony. When he named Ghost he did so because he felt invisible, forgotten, but now he’s haunted by them: the ghosts of everyone he’s lost whispering in his ear.

“How am I different from the rest of them, then? If I ask you to dirty yourself for me-”

“You aren’t asking. I’m offering. I’m not doing it because you told me to, or forced me into a position where I had no other option. You have to focus on the war with the dead, and you can’t do that if you have to watch for knives at your back at every turn.”

The phrase sends a shiver down his spine, a pale echo of the cold kiss of steel blades. He wonders, not for the first time, whether he is fully the man who bled out in the snow betrayed. Did the Red Woman’s magic take something from him?

No. He supposes, looking at her. Life has not left either of them the person they were or might have become if things had been different. If it had, he supposes, they would not be talking like this. They would not be facing one another at all.

He looks at Sansa and he wonders whether he is destined to have his life forever overshadowed by women with hair like flames. Lady Catelyn's pained disapproving gaze. Ygritte’s irreverent joy. The Red Woman with her convictions and her secrets. Sansa at once so near and so distant from him.

Here and now, he is a man who will be swayed by her, not out of duty, but out of some deeper necessity.

“It’s hard to stop watching for them, after you’ve had them pierce your skin from all angles,” he admits.

“I know,” she turns back to him and leans over the table, a softer look on her face as she pulls off one glove and reaches out to touch his face, “The effort it takes not to flinch, not to jump at shadows.”

This is the most vulnerable she has been with him since that first day, where she threw herself into his arms with a lost abandon. She’s sat by his side and offered her support and contradiction, but even in those few moments where her restraint has slipped he’s only seen bitterness and frustration.

Her blue eyes meet his, and he hesitantly covers the hand she has on his face with his own, pausing to remove that glove as well.

“I will never give you cause to fear me,” he promises, and her fingers widen to twine with his.

She gives his face a full appraisal, as though surveying its contents for answers of some kind before saying, “Not for my own sake I think.”

A small thin closed lipped half smile emerges and she leans even so slowly forward towards him. The warmth from the hearth seems to have spread a great distance somehow to reach them at the head dais.

If anything, he thinks, he might expect a press of her forehead to his or a chaste kiss on his cheek, soft, dutiful, sisterly.

Even as her lips find his, he does not quite comprehend her intention. Not until the second pass, when she tilts her face just so. _Oh_ , he suddenly realizes, _**OH**._

For a moment, a brief moment, he forgets. He forgets the weight of the fate of Westeros pressing down on his shoulders, the enemies that beset them from every direction, the weightstone of being Ned Stark’s bastard hanging around his neck. For a moment there is only himself and Sansa in the world, as she trusts him beyond the limitation of words and oaths.

His mouth moves to meet hers, open and trusting and the warmth of her breath contrasting with the chill on their lips. For a moment she freezes, breath stopping, but then she sighs and pulls his face a little closer, more insistent now.

It ends of course, as all good things seem to. She looks him up and down as she drops her hand from his face and backs away from the table that stands between them.

“You watch my back then, Jon, and I’ll watch yours,” she says then with a somewhat stronger smile, coy rather than wary, as though they’d been speaking with words this whole while.

Then she turns and departs and Jon is left with the distinct impression that he has just been tested, though he doesn’t know for what exact purpose or how he has fared. _Things would be simpler if it were any of the others here_ , he thinks. And yet, he finds he is glad that it was Sansa… is Sansa.

He thinks to himself, he ought to have talked to her about it first. Maybe, if he’d persuaded her, she might have figured out how to persuade the rest of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [sophiahelix ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix) for encouraging another relapse on my part with this fandom (even though she's made of stronger stuff than me and staying clean) with her positive encouragement.
> 
> It's been a while.


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